According to Microsoft, US-based users of Vista Home Premium and Vista Ultimate will soon be able to download a simple update that will enable them to "enjoy a range of television and video content on their PCs and TV sets [with a Media Center Extender of some sort] without a TV tuner in their PC." The streaming content will all be ad-supported "by an advertising platform provided by YuMe," which means that you'll be getting it gratis. The programming reportedly "comes from MSN Video," and just over 100 hours of it will be available when the beta begins.
That alone was interesting, but seeing it was content from MSN Video made me lose interest a little bit. I don't think much of MSN Video. But then I saw this:
To whet your appetite, a few notables that will be available are "full episodes of TV shows such as 'Arrested Development,' full-length music concerts by artists such as Chris Cornell, Snoop Dogg, Elton John, Pink, John Mayer and the Pussycat Dolls, movie trailers, news segments from MSNBC, and sports clips from FOX Sports.
This sounds like it could pretty cool...it's certainly very similar to Joost (my previous post on Joost is here).
You may recall I created a DVD comparison search back at the end of 2005 primarily to compare prices of DVDs between Amazon.com and Deep Discount DVD. Considering I was getting all of the results via screenscraping because neither site provided an API, it's unsurprising the tool eventually broke (particularly because Deep Discount DVD switched domains as they shortened their name).
So I decided to update it, mostly because Amazon now has an API and I wanted to play with that. So now you can go to the DVD price comparison tool page, enter a DVD name (TV shows on DVD work too...include a number to find a particular season/volume). In the results you will get the top Amazon.com matches, and I compare the top match from that to the top match from Deep Discount.
The result is pretty good...here's a search for the recently released Casino Royale. And the search from my original post about the tool still works: Airplane: The "Don't Call Me Shirley" edition.
As before, let me know if you want me to add another site to compare to. Best Buy's website is still a pain in the ass (and nearly always more expensive).
Amazon launched the public beta of Amazon MP3, which lets you buy MP3 versions (and high quality - 256kbps!) of your music so there's no restrictions on how/where you can use it.
And they're beating iTunes on price, with the top 100 songs at $0.89 and the top 100 albums at or below $8.99.
This story isn't all that interesting...basically Kiefer Sutherland was arrested for drunk driving (according to TMZ). But the line in TVSquad's story made me laugh:
The field sobriety test given to Sutherland showed the star was two times over the state limit of .08. Too bad he wasn't three times over, that would have been 24 and would have been great promotion for the show, though the show doesn't start up again for a few more months so that probably wouldn't have been great strategy.
There's two shows I'm really excited about for the new fall season, 30 Rock and The Office. Even moreso after rewatching episodes from the just released DVDs of their previous seasons. Both shows are kicking off their seasons with one-hour premieres, but will ultimately fill half-hour slots back-to-back. The Office premieres on Thursday, September 27th at 8c, and the first 4 episodes are all going to be an hour long.
30 Rock now comes before The Office (it was the other way around last season) at 7:30c. The season premiere is an hour long and starts on October 4th, and Jerry Seinfeld is guest starring (it sounds like they've got a few cameos lined up this season). And NBC has put the entire first season online in their video player.
My guess would be that on Oct. 4th the hour-long episode of The Office that's supposed to be on must start at 8:30 instead of 8c since 30 Rock ill run until 8:30. It's a good thing you don't have to worry about figuring out the schedule if you've got a DVR!
In other fall TV news I'm also excited about Family Guy and The Simpsons.
Surely I can't be the only one that was unaware that The Daily Show's Samantha Bee and Jason Jones are married. I found out by reading an interview with her online. Though it sounds like they may have talked about it on the show when she left temporarily to have their child and Jason Jones was brought to fill in. So Nancy Walls and Steve Carell were married and also both correspondents...I wonder if there have been any other relationships that took place. It's like the Daily Show is planning to breed a race of super-comedians.
In another comedian relation (though not a marriage), Vance DeGeneres is the brother of Ellen and was a correspondent from 1999 to 2001.
Google will sponsor the newest contest by the X Prize Foundation, which three years ago handed $10 million to a team that sent SpaceShipOne into suborbit and back twice over a two-week period. The nonprofit foundation seeks to promote scientific breakthroughs that benefit humanity.
In the new contest, teams will compete to land a privately funded robotic rover on the moon. It will have to roam at least 500 meters of the lunar surface and complete several missions, such as transmitting photos and videos back to Earth.
A grand prize of $20 million will be awarded to the first team to do this no later than Dec. 31, 2012. A second place award of $5 million will go to a second team that can complete this by Dec. 31, 2014. Bonuses of $5 million will be awarded for additional tasks. The announcement was made at Wired magazine's NextFest tech conference in Los Angeles on Thursday. The event, which ends Sunday, showcases leading-edge technologies.
The "Google Lunar X Prize" is the fourth contest sponsored by the X Prize Foundation. The first, the Ansari X Prize, was the one won by the SpaceShipOne team sponsored by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and headed by aerospace entrepreneur Burt Rutan and his company, Scaled Composites. British entrepreneur Richard Branson has teamed up with Rutan and formed the Spaceship Company, jointly owned by Branson's Virgin Group and Scaled Composites. They are building SpaceShipTwo, which Branson's Virgin Galactic will use to send paying customers into orbit.
In October, the X Prize Foundation announced a contest with a $10million prize, the Archon X Prize for Genetics. The award will go to the first team that can successfully map 100 human genomes in 10 days. Rapid genome sequencing is widely regarded as the next great frontier for science, ushering in an era of personalized preventative medicine.
In April, the foundation announced the $10 million Automotive X Prize. This one is for teams that build vehicles that can get 100 miles per gallon. More than 30 teams have signed letters of intent to compete in that contest.
The idea for the Lunar X Prize emerged from a meeting in March between Google co-founder Larry Page and X Prize Foundation founder Dr. Peter Diamandis. Page is on the foundation's board. Google is the exclusive sponsor. Google already has a Google Moon site, with photos and data focused on the Apollo moon missions.
People thought Google Moon was just for fun, "but now you know we are serious about this," said Page, who helped make the Lunar X Prize announcement. "Science and engineering, if you ask an economist, are the only ways that we have to increase our economics and productivity. We believe that these kinds of contests, in setting an ambitious goal like going to the moon, are really a good way to improve the state of humanity."
This is pretty cool...I always found the X Prize for reusable spacecraft fascinating, and it's interesting to see the different kinds of scientific endeavours they are helping to make possible. Now award a $10 million prize to whoever invents a safe hovercar! It's about time we had those.
I was excited last week. I had been waiting over a year to upgrade my 3G 20GB iPod because I knew a touchscreen version was in the works. The release of the iPhone added fuel to the fire of touchscreen iPod rumors, and then a bunch of websites confirmed that's what was going to be unveiled. But Apple did something weird. They updated their iPods to massive storage spaces. 80GB for the smaller option! That kind of space used to come with a premium price, and now it was the base iPod. And they did indeed reveal the touchscreen iPod, but it came with some bad news. Being flash based, there is far less storage on it...16GB for the biggest option.
So it came down to an unfortunate decision....either a larger screen for video and a slick touch interface in the iPod Touch, or a massive amount of storage and longer battery life in the iPod Classic. Seeing how storage and battery were pretty major, I reluctantly decided I'd rather go the classic route since much of the touchscreen's charm is just eyecandy.
But playing with the Classic in the Apple store, I quickly found some of the rumors I had seen around the net seemed to be true despite many people claiming they were false. The Classic (and the nano as well, but it seems more noticable on the classic) is really slow. Everything about the interface was slow. I expected that maybe Coverflow wouldn't be as great as it may seem because it'd be hard to make it run smoothly, but even the standard interface for looking by artist, albums, etc. was sluggish. Doing anything seemed to take longer and lag more than I would expect with an Apple product, especially after being so used to the super-fast response times on older iPods.
Besides, after playing with an iPod Touch at the store as well, the screen on the classic felt miniscule. I guess I'm waiting until they either get much more storage into the iPod Touch (it could be a while...adding a hard drive would only reduce battery life further to something intolerable, and it doesn't look like they'll be able to get some massive flash storage in there real soon either). It is also possible that Apple could release a firmware update that resolves the slowness issue.
In the meantime, I'll be keeping an eye on the new players by Creative. Currently they're not anywhere near the same amount of storage for the same price, but their screens are better and they can play more video formats (so you don't have to do conversions like you do for the iPod).
This looks quite grim, especially after my post a couple of days ago was trying to be optimistic about it:
Rotten Tomatoes has The Brothers Solomon at 0% based on 16 critics' reviews on the day before release. Some of the comments:
"With The Brothers Solomon, Will Arnett continues to squander the goodwill he engendered as Gob on Arrested Development."
"Feels like a cheapo, soft-R retread of the dimwits' progress from Dumb and Dumber"
"Shows how far SNL has fallen in its attempt to create original comedy; other times, it makes the Farrelly Brothers seem tasteful."
"During the fallow opening minutes of The Brothers Solomon, I started keeping track of how much time would elapse before it made me laugh. Still waiting."
"Forte consistently aims low, even for his apparent target audience of ignorant goons."
"It isn't funny."
However the user rating is at a 75% based on 3 reviews. And one of those said that the two Wills were funny, but the movie plot was very similar to other movies like Night at the Roxbury. The other 3 reviews don't have any comments.
I suppose there should be many more reviews after the movie comes out tomorrow. But as of right now it's not looking very good. I guess I won't be trying to see this one in theaters after all. Bummer.
